Joaquin Phoenix Says He Tried To Keep Joker Mysterious

Joaquin Phoenix recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about his performance in the upcoming Joker film and how he didn’t study any past Jokers for his turn.

“For me the attraction to make this film was we were going to approach it in our own way,” Phoenix said. “I didn’t refer to any past iterations of [the Joker]. It just felt like our own creations, which was really important to me and the key to it.”

Phoenix also talked about how much losing 52 pounds for the role impacted his psychology.

“It turns out that affects your psychology,” he said. “You start to go mad.”

Phoenix also noted that he purposefully tried to not define Joker and tried to keep a mystery to him.

“He’s so hard to define and you don’t really want to define him,” he said. “We would get close at times where I found that I would identify certain parts of his personality or his motivation and then I would back away from that because I wanted there to be a mystery to the character.”

Joker opens October 3rd.